Category: The Sketchbook Project Limited Edition

When I started this blog 5 years ago, it was the plan to keep it for the three years that my studies would take. As those who have followed my journey know, things have not quite panned out the way I expected them to.

The last 5 years have both been more awful and more awesome than I could have imagined: while my studies were more often than not a huge stressful disappointment and my health issues (culminating in my stroke) were awful, I did get to go to Berkeley, work on my sketchbook projects, do screenprinting, photography and creative writing classes, was admitted to a creative writing MA and for 3 of those years had the luck to have a cat as awesome as Clark living with me.

It had always been the plan to move on to somewhere else after I was done with my studies.

Despite me not having graduated yet, I will indeed be moving on. There are only so many hours in a day/week/month and there are still so many things that I want to do. On top of that, I think this blog has served its purpose. I want to retire it in style, instead of letting it fizzle out.

Fear not, I’m not going to erase anything, this blog will be here for as long as wordpress.com leaves it up. And yes, I will make sure to back it up of course.

My new place will be LPinprogress, a more static portfolio style site where I’ll collect information about my zines, sketchbook projects and other creative activities past and present.

Speaking about zines: I have finished the writing for The Wreckage. File under: things nobody expected to happen, ever. I will be writing The Berk next week. If all goes according to plan, they will both be published sometime in September. Yes, 2016. When they are done, I will resume working on the three sketchbook projects, finish them and send them off to Brooklyn.

Thank you, dear reader, for coming along with me on this bumpy ride. For cheering me on and supporting me when times were rough, for being happy for me when things were awesome, and for respectfully and thoughtfully sharing your thoughts, opinions and feelings with me.

Finally, after about 8 million years, some zine news: I have resumed work on The Wreckage, zine #2 in ~the trilogy~! Having read through all the material, I have distilled which topics are going to be featured in what order. Well, sorta kinda, I assume some switching around will happen, but at least I have a general idea. In the coming week(s), I will be editing down the heap of words into readable “chapters”, and then hopefully get to the layout phase and finally finish it and move on to the final installment of ~the trilogy~.

I am trying to get them done quickly not only because I have been working on them for so long and need to get the momentum back, but also because I still have three different Sketchbook Project projects lying around that I would like to finish up. Only one of them has a deadline, thankfully. The biggest challenge will be finding the folder in which I put them (and the notes/ideas I already had for them), as my house is still a lot on the messy side and I seem to have misplaced… everything. I will of course, as always, keep you updated. 😀

With this being most likely the last long summer break ~ever~, I figured that this was an excellent moment to try and finish up all of my current projects in process. Eons ago, I started working on who “extra” sketchbooks: The Memoir Project and one that was part of the Limited Edition series. By “working on” I mean that I was still in the “generating ideas”-stage of both projects when the deadlines flew by, and I hadn’t worked on them since.

When I found out that you are still able to send in your sketchbooks even (way) past the deadline, I realised that rebooting these projects would be the most efficient way of silencing that “You didn’t finish this!”-voice in the back of my head. Problem was: I had no clue what happened to the two sketchbooks, so I decided to make them myself.

For The Memoir Project, I took a pink, velvet-printed notebook, dismantled it and cut it to size. For the Limited Edition one, I took some of that fancy eco-friendly 120 grams off-white paper and hand bound it together into a book shape. Of course I took pictures during all of this, but when transferring them from my camera to my laptop I saw that they were all blurry beyond postability, except for this one:

From left to right: Sketchbook 2016, The Memoir Project, Limited Edition

As you can see in the picture, I also did the cover for my 2016 sketchbook. Updates on all individual projects to follow of course, and yes, I’ll make sure to wear my glasses before deciding “Yup, this picture is ok!” and moving on.